Marketing and Promotional Plans

"If you build it they will come" is a great movie quote but couldn't be farther from the truth in business. Great products with awesome features won't sell if nobody knows about them. Conversely there have been numerous examples, over the years, of less than perfect products that have taken market leadership positions due to innovative marketing and promotional strategies.

Marketing and promotional planning covers two primary areas.

 

Branding, positioning and target definition - Knowing your target audience is essential if the right messages are to be crafted that will most appropriately match their needs and desires. Brand and image matching is a very close fit here as one needs to ensure that the image portrayed by any marketing collateral matches the brand promise and the expectations of your defined audience. Likewise, positioning a product against its competition must highlight differentiation: - Why yours not theirs! Clear and consistent messaging is the goal - mixed messaging is your enemy.

 

Promotional, collateral and media planning - Once your position, brand, targets and messages are defined, the next step is choosing the right vehicles and strategies with which to communicate them. There is no "cookie cutter" answer. A nationwide TV and glossy magazine campaign may sound like a nice idea but unless you have many millions of dollars to spend this is out of the reach of most companies. Creating the right promotional mix is key, and this can be achieved without breaking the bank. There are numerous tactical, low budget, marketing techniques that can be highly effective and when used in conjunction with traditional advertising and PR strategies create a budget efficient and message optimized campaign. At JRDR we have had experience working with promotional budgets large and small and can help advise on and implement the right plan for the right budget.